/**
 * Licensed to Apereo under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. Apereo
 * licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use
 * this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at the
 * following location:
 *
 * <p>http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * <p>Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the
 * License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either
 * express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apereo.portal.security;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * An interface that defines the required methods for assigning and retrieving information about the
 * authenticated principal (user). Providers requiring additional principal information should
 * extend this interface rather than replacing it.
 */
public interface IPrincipal extends Serializable {

    /** Returns the locally unique username or user identifier for this principal. */
    public String getUID();

    /**
     * Returns the globally unique user identifier for this principal. This identifier should be
     * maximally unique within the scope of the deployed security mechanism.
     */
    public String getGlobalUID();

    /**
     * Returns the human-readable name of the principal. This should be either their first and last
     * name or whatever local convention dicates should be returned by the CommonName (CN) attribute
     * for those security contexts using X.509 style naming.
     */
    public String getFullName();

    /**
     * Sets the locally unique username in preparation for authentication. Note that
     * post-authentication, an attempt to set a UID may either fail or reset the authentication
     * status of the security context container.
     *
     * @param UID The desired locally unique UID value.
     */
    public void setUID(String UID);
}
